61,258 REASONS TO QUIT DRINKING

Back by popular demand! Haha I always wanted to say that and due to recent requests from friends and followers I am finally taking my time write this blog that explains why I am giving up drinking for a while. Life is wonderful and full of excitement so I don’t want unnecessary distractions making me feel otherwise. Last month I went to Malta to attend a crazy bachelor party and an amazing wedding. My old friend Jens Boye got married to his love of his life Jade.

As we were about to have dinner after a very romantic ceremony I suddenly couldn’t see my plate of food properly. Søren who was sitting next to me was also missing but I could hear his voice. “Not now!” I was thinking to myself. I was sad to find myself 3000 km from home surrounded by old friends knowing a painful migraine attack was underway.

I suffer from aura migraines that first take away my vision and later if not medicated turns into living hell. A migraine is not a headache. Migraine is actually a recurrent, episodic, genetic, neurological disease, which means I among many others have a genuine neurological disease - all the time. It helps to understand if you compare it to epilepsy since that is also a neurological disorder. Even when you don’t have it you suffer from it just like migraine. Most people you ask who suffer from migraine have most likely felt the urge to kill themselves to avoid the agony under the worst circumstances if only they could get out of bed.

Explaining the pain is probably just as impossible as for a woman to explain a man what it feels like giving birth.

Anyways let me get back to the story. I was lucky that I ran into Benjamin and told him what was going on. He knows about my illness and quickly rushed to the front desk to get me into a dark room where I could lay down. Meanwhile he and Jacob rushed to Jacob’s apartment to get my medication that helps ease the pain and kill the aura symptoms.  My thoughts were briefly interrupted as I was laying on the floor in a huge ball room. I heard “MMmmhhrrrrfff” coming from the room. I had a tablecloth wrapped around my head to make it dark so it took me a while to look up. It was dark and my vision was blurred to say the least but I saw a man with a trey saying “where do you want the water sir”. I looked around in a room that could host a party of 150 people and said “anywhere is good thanks...” Moments after I heard a loud voice “I feel it in my finger. I feel it in my toes. Love is all around me...” Great Saturday night was karaoke night at SAS Radisson. FML.

Lying on the floor I heard my own voice repeating itself “it is weird when I was playing poker I was more stressed than ever but I didn't have same problem with migraine" (poker is tough since it can mess with your mind and common logic). Yet as discussed with Peter Hallberg recently when I was part of the Poker Office here in Copenhagen, I did not have a single migraine attack. True I had it when I was in Australia and Ukraine last year, but that was under extreme weather conditions.

Laying on the floor with a tablecloth around my head feeling sad and ill my mind was racing with thoughts and that’s when I had a eureka moment and decided to give up alcohol to test the effects. The reason being that when I was playing poker for a living and worked dedicated to make as much profit as possible I did not go out on weekends. Friday and Saturday was my two most important days to work. Though some of my friends did not appreciate this I stood ground and worked while everyone else was relaxing and partying. I took Mondays off instead.

The actual 61.258 reasons to quit drinking

1. The reason to quit is to see if I can lower the frequency of my migraine attacks. The neurological disease scares me to say the least and is a constant concern - when does it strike next?

2. When you have hangovers you are less productive and obstacles seems hard to overcome. We all know the guilt feeling and how the coming week seems like an endless uphill battle

3. Heavy drinking sessions are unhealthy as well and lead to eating junk food, laziness and sleeping long hours.

4 - 61,253. The remaining 61,250 reasons to quit drinking represents each euro that four guys have invested in my business plan to launch a binary options broker that within a matter of weeks will go live and operational. Hopefully this summer will be a stepping stone for making us all millionaires in the years to come.

With support and understanding from friends and family I don’t think it will be hard to give up alcohol for now since my reasons mapped out in this blog is now printed on the inside of my eyelids. I have a clear goal and that is to get well and potentially live a life without too much stress that the neurological disease caused me the past 5 years. You might think “what is the big deal? quit drinking is easy” and to some extend I agree. But in our society almost all social events are combined with drinking and being the weird single guy drinking sparkling water is not very manly nor very social.

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Thanks a million

Erik